28/10/2017

If you’ve followed this blog for a while you may remember that I’ve spoken at a couple of Camp Widow® programs. They are amazing gatherings of widowed people who want to focus on moving forward in their lives while honoring their spouses who have passed.

Carrie West, Ph.D. is a young widow who regularly speaks at these programs on the topic of resilience. She’s on the board of Soaring Spirits International (SSI) which produces Camp Widow® and she’s an assistant professor at Schreiner University.

Dr. West approached the university about conducing a research project which involved collecting data from the widowed people who attend the programs.

Soaring Spirits International (SSI) and opened the Soaring Spirits Resilience Center at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas on Friday, October 20th. The center will provide practical tools based on her resilience research to the population of widowed people who are working through grief.

The Resilience Center, the first center of its kind in the U.S., will focus primarily on grief and resilience.

“Our hope is that through the Center a variety of grieving populations will be served; and that the Center’s resources and tools for building resilience through any of life’s challenges will benefit Schreiner students, as well as the broader community,” said Michele Neff Hernandez, executive director for Soaring Spirits International.

02/05/2017

Two widows walk into a hotel…

Sounds like the start of a joke, right? No joke here.

When Michele Neff Hernandez was widowed as a young woman she started Camp Widow™ and Soaring Spirits International so other widows, of any age, would have a place to focus on rebuilding their lives. Carrie West, another young widow was doing her Ph.D. research on resilience so the two teamed up. Read the rest of this entry »